Wednesday, February 29, 2012

I realized after last week's update that I had missed a bit of black outline on the brown haired Boy from Crash & The Boys. So that's been fixed.

I'm down to just a few bits of shading on the purple haired Boy, so by next week, I'll have moved on to a tiny blue bird next to that Boy's head and from there, a pig even further to the left. From there I have to decide whether to drop down or move all the way back to the right to start the line of characters. If I drop down, those characters are slightly obscured, so that's what I'll probably do. Besides, that'd mean I get to work on Young Neil.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I had the idea of giving y'all a look at the full project every ten posts. It seemed like a good idea. I'm making one of these posts per week, so you'd only see the whole project every two and a half months.

And then I forgot about it.

Last week was my 10th work in progress post and I completely whiffed on remembering to do the full project shot. So I'm making it up to you this week. The upside for you is that I won't remember this in 9 weeks and give you another full look on update #20.

I've finished all the black stitching that I had originally passed on doing because I didn't have any black floss at the time. You can't tell right now, but I'm working on the black on the right side of the purple headed member of Crash & The Boys.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

It's been a while since I gave y'all an update, but that's because I've broken down and gotten black floss. Since the black is just providing shading and definition, it's hard to see progress. But I've done enough now where you can start to see some changes.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

I think it might be time to go out and get more black floss. The character I'm working on now is mostly obscured by the guy in front of him, so it won't be that long til I'm done. If I wait much longer to get more black, there's going to be an awfully large amount of stuff to backtrack through and fill in.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Last night, I got into a terrible snit after hearing about the Komen Foundation defunding Planned Parenthood, so I needed to be destructive. Most of the time my destructiveness has a creative end in mind, so when I picked up a hacksaw at my local 24 hour all-purposes store (read: evil Wal-Mart), I also grabbed some plastic dinosaurs.

When I got home, I promptly terrified my boyfriend with the hacksaw (I never did adhere to that whole "pointy things are dangerous, don't point them at people" rule...) and then settled down at my fabulous craft station (read: kitchen table) to destroy something awesome and then make it into something even more awesome.

Pulling out some wooden plaques I had lying about, I assembled my materials.

Ingredients:

black spray paint

plastic dinosaur of your choosing

wooden plaque

fabric you're willing to cut up

sawtooth picture hanger

hacksaw

scissors

hot glue gun & glue

optional: sandpaper for if your wooden plaque is a little rough around the edges. But then again, aren't we all?

First, I grabbed a dinosaur, made him walk all over the table like the ferocious plastic beast he is, then snagged a wooden plaque.

Holding the plaque up to the dinosaur, I determined at what angle I wanted him to protrude from the plaque. Once I had this figured out, I proceeded to use the hacksaw to cut him in two.

Take notice of the attitude on Lennon, the T-rex, (I think... these plastic dinosaurs are kind of ambiguous, quite frankly, so I suppose my opinion is the one that counts, since they're my dinosaurs, so I'm calling him a T-rex. An oddly misformed T-rex, but a T-rex nonetheless), while his friend Thor* (the apatosaurus) is being hacked in half by a slightly deranged Southerner transplanted in Yankee-land. (This is what I'm holding responsible for my obvious split from reality in choosing to cut dinosaurs in half.)

I got into a pretty good rhythm until I realized that I didn't want to cut a hole in the kitchen table, so I had Chuck hold the dinosaur while I cut through the last of his poor little plastic body. Then VOILA! I had a dinosaur cut in two.

See also: please ignore my (also slightly deranged) boyfriend eating oranges in the background. God knows I tried to, but it's a little difficult when you have this face staring holes INTO YOUR SOUL while you cut dinosaurs in half.

Even though I was just planning on doing one "taxidermied" dinosaur in one sitting, I decided to go ahead and saw Lennon in half. He earned it - he was such a shit talker while Thor was being cut in two. You deserve what you get, Lennon. You. deserve. what. you. get. What a dick.

Even though I was doing this project at two in the morning, I still needed to spray paint my wooden plaques, so I carried them outside to do so. I never thought I would find myself saying this, but most of the damn snow is gone, so I had to go in search of somewhere appropriate for me to spray paint. (I've been just laying whatever I needed to spray paint directly on the ground on top of the snow.) Luckily, I found a small patch of snow left to spray paint on and proceeded to spray like a mother. (But not like a human mother. We don't want to upset @elcinco or give joy to @tedbigsby.) Once the plaques were mostly dry, I brought them back in to dry some more and give the apartment a lovely fragrance of spray paint fumes. I'd post a picture of me spray painting the plaques, but it was really dark and I've been using my phone to take pics, so they didn't come out.
Whilst heating up my glue gun, I went ahead and started cutting out my fabric, using a drinking glass from my pledging days as a template for the shape.

I may or may not have accidentally sharpied the glass. >.>
Oh, well. It'll come off with an alcohol swab. Of which I have a total of none. ::shrug::
Now that the glue gun was heated up and dripping globs of hot glue jizz all over the table, it was time to attach the fabric to the plaque! Starting at one edge of the fabric circle, I began making strips of glue across the diameter of the awesome argyle circle. In the end, I set the pledging glass right side up on the fabric to squish the glue down and form a good seal.
After trimming the random fabric "hairs" from my awesome argyle circle, Thor was ready to take center stage of his taxidermy career. Hot glue went all over his back end and I pressed it into the center of the awesome argyle circle.
After running another strip of hot glue around the outside of Thor's tiny besieged plastic body to make sure he stayed stuck to the plaque, I flipped the plaque over to attach the sawtooth picture hanging hook.
As you can tell, unlike my mother who believed that the back of any craft should be as pretty as the front, I don't give a rat's ass what the back of my crafts look like.

Sadly, the plaque was a little too thin for me to hammer the tiny sharp nails into it, so I ended up using the hot glue gun to attach it.

And with that, I was through with my "taxidermied" dinosaur!

[That's an 8x10 photo on the left for size comparison.]

Bonus pic: I'm the Nelly of the Crafty Bitch World. I poured a little diet orange soda out for my homies.

And now for you: if you liked Thor, the "taxidermied" dinosaur & want one of your own, leave a comment detailing what your favorite dinosaur is and why. You can leave your comment on my Facebook, Twitter, or here. I'll pick my favorite on February 8 & send you your very own "taxidermied" dinosaur, featuring Lennon, the Dickish Maybe T-rex!

*I named Lennon for John Lennon. No reason other than I was listening to Oh My Love when I started the project. Thor is named so because the apatosaurus used to be the brontosaurus, which means "thunder lizard."